The invention relates to an apparatus for guiding and extending ventilating conduits in mining and tunnelling conditions.
Particularly by reason of the use of self-propelled mining and tunnelling machines, the rates of advance when digging tunnels and galleries have risen to such an extent that extending the ventilating conduit to provide the necessary ventilation at the mine face in pace with the mining or tunnelling machine presents considerable difficulties.
When mining or tunnelling it is often impossible to maintain the outlet end of the ventilating conduit directly at the face. Particular difficulties also arise when there is a connection between the ventilating conduit and the self-propelled mining machine when the latter is moved backwards. In order to ensure the maintenance of the constant distance between the ventilating outlet opening and the face prescribed by the mining authorities, nestable ventilating pipes have been used for some time as a ventilating pipe store. Such ventilating pipe stores are complicated to build, are expensive to buy and awkward to use. Furthermore they can only store relatively short lengths of the ventilating conduit.
In contrast to this it is the object of the invention to provide an apparatus for guiding and extending ventilating conduits which avoids the disadvantages mentioned above and which represents a simple, safe and economical solution to the problems arising in the extending and guiding of ventilating conduits.